Report says Pakistani spy agency supporting Taliban

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's main spy agency continues to arm and train the Taliban and is even represented on the group's leadership council despite U.S. pressure to sever ties and billions in aid to combat the militants, said a research report released Sunday.

The findings could heighten tension between the two countries and raise further questions about U.S. success in Afghanistan since Pakistani cooperation is seen as key to defeating the Taliban, which seized power in Kabul in the 1990s with Islamabad's support.

U.S. officials have suggested in the past that current or former members of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, have maintained links to the Taliban despite the government's decision to denounce the group in 2001 under U.S. pressure.

But the report issued Sunday by the London School of Economics offered one of the strongest cases that assistance to the group is official ISI policy, and even extends to the highest levels of the Pakistani government.

"Without a change in Pakistani behavior it will be difficult, if not impossible, for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," said the report, written by Matt Waldman, of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

But the Pakistan military's campaign has been focused on Pakistani Taliban battling the state, not Afghan Taliban waging war against NATO troops in Afghanistan. The army has resisted U.S. pressure to wage offensives in areas of the country the Afghan Taliban use as sanctuaries, despite billions of dollars in American military and civilian aid.

Many analysts think Pakistan is reluctant to turn against the Afghan Taliban because the government thinks the group could be a key ally in Afghanistan after NATO forces withdraw, and the best partner for countering the influence of archenemy India in the country.